Holding the heavy gun, Will swept his hand sideways and knocked the golden monkey off his perch, stunning him so that Mrs. Coulter groaned aloud and the monkey's paw relaxed enough to let the tiny woman struggle free.
In a moment she leapt up to the rocks, and the man sprang away from Mrs. Coulter, both of them moving as quickly as grasshoppers. The three children had no time to be astonished. The man was concerned: he felt his companion's shoulder and arm tenderly, and embraced her swiftly before calling to Will.
"You! Boy!" he said, and although his voice was small in volume, it was as deep as a grown man's. "Have you got the knife?"
"Of course I have," said Will. If they didn't know it was broken, he wasn't going to tell them.
"You and the girl will have to follow us. Who is the other child?"
"Ama, from the village," said Will.
"Tell her to return there. Move now, before the Swiss come."
Will didn't hesitate. Whatever these two intended, he and Lyra could still get away through the window he'd opened behind the bush on the path below.
So he helped her up and watched curiously as the two small figures leapt on - what? Birds? No, dragonflies, as large as seagulls, which had been waiting in the darkness. Then they darted forward to the cave mouth, where Mrs. Coulter lay. She was half-stunned with pain and drowsy from the Chevalier's sting, but she reached up as they went past her, and cried:
"Lyra! Lyra, my daughter, my dear one! Lyra, don't go! Don't go!"
Lyra looked down at her, anguished; but then she stepped over her mother's body and loosened Mrs. Coulter's feeble clutch from her ankle. The woman was sobbing now; Will saw the tears glistening on her cheeks.
Crouching just beside the cave mouth, the three children waited until there was a brief pause in the shooting, and then followed the dragonflies as they darted down the path. The light had changed: as well as the cold anbaric gleam from the zeppelins' floodlights, there was the leaping orange of flames.
Will looked back once. In the glare Mrs. Coulter's face was a mask of tragic passion, and her daemon clung piteously to her as she knelt and held out her arms, crying:
"Lyra! Lyra, my love! My heart's treasure, my little child, my only one! Oh, Lyra, Lyra, don't go, don't leave me! My darling daughter - you're tearing my heart - "
And a great and furious sob shook Lyra herself, for, after all, Mrs. Coulter was the only mother she would ever have, and Will saw a cascade of tears run down the girl's cheeks.
But he had to be ruthless. He pulled at Lyra's hand, and as the dragonfly rider darted close to his head, urging them to hurry, he led her at a crouching run down the path and away from the cave. In Will's left hand, bleeding again from the blow he'd landed on the monkey, was Mrs. Coulter's pistol.
"Make for the top of the cliff," said the dragonfly rider, "and give yourself up to the Africans. They're your best hope."
Mindful of those sharp spurs, Will said nothing, though he hadn't the least intention of obeying. There was only one place he was making for, and that was the window behind the bush; so he kept his head low and ran fast, and Lyra and Ama ran behind him.
"Halt!"
There was a man, three men, blocking the path ahead - uniformed - white men with crossbows and snarling wolf-dog daemons - the Swiss Guard.
"Iorek!" cried Will at once. "Iorek Byrnison!" He could hear the bear crashing and snarling not far away, and hear the screams and cries of the soldiers unlucky enough to meet him.
But someone else came from nowhere to help them: Balthamos, in a blur of desperation, hurled himself between the children and the soldiers. The men fell back, amazed, as this apparition shimmered into being in front of them.
But they were trained warriors, and a moment later their daemons leapt at the angel, savage teeth flashing white in the gloom - and Balthamos flinched: he cried out in fear and shame, and shrank back. Then he sprang upward, beating his wings hard. Will watched in dismay as the figure of his guide and friend soared up to vanish out of sight among the treetops.
Lyra was following it all with still-dazed eyes. It had taken no more than two or three seconds, but it was enough for the Swiss to regroup, and now their leader was raising his crossbow, and Will had no choice: he swung up the pistol and clamped his right hand to the butt and pulled the trigger, and the blast shook his bones, but the bullet found the man's heart.
The soldier fell back as if he'd been kicked by a horse. Simultaneously the two little spies launched themselves at the other two, leaping from the dragonflies at their victims before Will could blink. The woman found a neck, the man a wrist, and each made a quick backward stab with a heel. A choking, anguished gasp, and the two Swiss died, their daemons vanishing in mid-howl.
Will leapt over the bodies, and Lyra went with him, running hard and fast with Pantalaimon racing wildcat-formed at their heels. Where's Ama? Will thought, and he saw her in the same moment dodging down a different path. Now she'll be safe, he thought, and a second later he saw the pale gleam of the window deep behind the bushes. He seized Lyra's arm and pulled her toward it. Their faces were scratched, their clothes were snagged, their ankles twisted on roots and rocks, but they found the window and tumbled through, into the other world, onto the bone-white rocks under the glaring moon, where only the scraping of the insects broke the immense silence.
And the first thing Will did was to hold his stomach and retch, heaving and heaving with a mortal horror. That was two men now that he'd killed, not to mention the youth in the Tower of the Angels... Will did not want this. His body revolted at what his instinct had made him do, and the result was a dry, sour, agonizing spell of kneeling and vomiting until his stomach and his heart were empty.
Lyra watched helpless nearby, nursing Pan, rocking him against her breast.
Will finally recovered a little and looked around. And at once he saw that they weren't alone in this world, because the little spies were there, too, with their packs laid on the ground nearby. Their dragonflies were skimming over the rocks, snapping up moths. The man was massaging the shoulder of the woman, and both of them looked at the children sternly. Their eyes were so bright and their features so distinct that there was no doubt about their feelings, and Will knew they were a formidable pair, whoever they were.
He said to Lyra, "The alethiometer's in my rucksack, there."
"Oh, Will - I did so hope you'd find it - whatever happened. Did you find your father? And my dream, Will - it's too much to believe, what we got to do, oh, I daren't even think of it... And it's safe! You brung it all this way safe for me..."
The words tumbled out of her so urgently that even she didn't expect answers. She turned the alethiometer over and over, her fingers stroking the heavy gold and the smooth crystal and the knurled wheels they knew so well.
Will thought: It'll tell us how to mend the knife!
But he said first, "Are you all right? Are you hungry or thirsty?"
"I dunno... yeah. But not too much. Anyway - "
"We should move away from this window," Will said, "just in case they find it and come through."
"Yes, that's true," she said, and they moved up the slope, Will carrying his rucksack and Lyra happily carrying the little bag she kept the alethiometer in. Out of the corner of his eye, Will saw the two small spies following, but they kept their distance and made no threat.
Over the brow of the rise there was a ledge of rock that offered a narrow shelter, and they sat beneath it, having carefully checked it for snakes, and shared some dried fruit and some water from Will's bottle.
Will said quietly, "The knife's broken. I don't know how it happened. Mrs. Coulter did something, or said something, and I thought of my mother and that made the knife twist, or catch, or - I don't know what happened. But we're stuck till we can get it mended. I didn't want those two little people to know, because while they think I can still use it, I've got the upper hand. I thought you could ask the alethiometer, maybe, and - "
"Yeah!" she said at once. "Yeah, I will."
She had the golden instrument out in a moment and moved into the moonlight so she could see the dial clearly. Looping back the hair behind her ears, just as Will had seen her mother do, she began to turn the wheels in the old familiar way, and Pantalaimon, mouse-formed now, sat on her knee.
She had hardly started before she gave a little gasp of excitement, and she looked up at Will with shining eyes as the needle swung. But it hadn't finished yet, and she looked back, frowning, until the instrument fell still.
She put it away, saying, "Iorek? Is he nearby, Will? I thought I heard you call him, but then I thought I was just wishing. Is he really?"
"Yes. Could he mend the knife? Is that what the alethiometer said?"
"Oh, he can do anything with metal, Will! Not only armor - he can make little delicate things as well..." She told him about the small tin box Iorek had made for her to shut the spy-fly in. "But where is he?"
"Close by. He would have come when I called, but obviously he was fighting... And Balthamos! Oh, he must have been so frightened..."
"Who?"
He explained briefly, feeling his cheeks warm with the shame that the angel must be feeling.
"But I'll tell you more about him later," he said. "It's so strange... He told me so many things, and I think I understand them, too..." He ran his hands through his hair and rubbed his eyes.
"You got to tell me everything," she said firmly. "Everything you did since she caught me. Oh, Will, you en't still bleeding? Your poor hand..."
"No. My father cured it. I just opened it up when I hit the golden monkey, but it's better now. He gave me some ointment that he'd made - "
"You found your father?"
"That's right, on the mountain, that night..."
He let her clean his wound and put on some fresh ointment from the little horn box while he told her some of what had happened: the fight with the stranger, the revelation that came to them both a second before the witch's arrow struck home, his meeting with the angels, his journey to the cave, and his meeting with Iorek.
"All that happening, and I was asleep," she marveled. "D'you know, I think she was kind to me, Will - I think she was, I don't think she ever wanted to hurt me... She did such bad things, but..."
She rubbed her eyes.
"Oh, but my dream, Will, I can't tell you how strange it was! It was like when I read the alethiometer, all that clearness and understanding going so deep you can't see the bottom, but clear all the way down.
"It was... Remember I told you about my friend Roger, and how the Gobblers caught him and I tried to rescue him, and it went wrong and Lord Asriel killed him?